Psychopomp and Circumstance

Halloween, when we flaunt what haunts, is a ripe time to admit we’re all haunted, no matter how stalwart. Our memories and regrets nibble like mice at the edge of consciousness and pester us, but it’s the idea of the greatest unknown—Death—that haunts us from cradle to grave. The question of who’s in the driver’s seat on our final ride and where we’re headed has plagued us since the concept of “here today, gone tomorrow” formed in Neanderthal brains.

To get a grip on death, we needed an image of the entity that conducts the business of dying and needed to name it—a weak attempt to be, if not in control, at least in the know. To that end, we got busy creating a cast and sketching a scenario for the final curtain call.

In ancient Greek, Roman, Slavic, and Germanic cultures, the three Fates spun the thread of life, measured its length, and snipped it; but they did not escort humans from point A, life, to point B, death. That was the role of a psychopomp. (Trust me. I did not make up this word.) It comes from Greek words psucho, anglicized to psyche, and pompos, meaning guide.

Having a guide assured that neophyte spirits did not lose their way en route to the afterlife. All ancient cultures had spirit guides, and some had greeters to the afterlife. Western civilizations created a throng of soul guides, ranging from compassionate counselors to psychopathic psychopomps: Brittany’s creepy shapeshifter Ankou often appeared as a tall, thin man in a cloak or as a skeleton carrying the dead in a horse-drawn cart; Grecian mythology birthed Thanatos, personification of death, child of Nyx (Night) and Erebos (Darkness), and twin of Hypnos (Sleep); Greeks believed Charon sulked at the Styx River dock not to guide, but to ferry souls to Hades for a price, which led to the tradition of putting coins in the mouths of the dead to pay the ferry toll; Hermes (a.k.a. Mercury, in Rome), was messenger of the gods, patron of travelers, and a perfect guide who took Greek souls to the Styx and Roman souls to the crater Avernus, an Underworld portal; the Norse Valkyries were the over-eager guides to Valhalla for heroes’ spirits, often swiping them alive-and-kicking off battlefields. Though the ancients believed death was a rational part of nature, they were just as skittish about dying as we are.

Following the demise of gods and goddesses, angels like the Archangel Michael took over guidance along the road to death, which made dying a holy experience … or maybe not. The image of an Angel of Death—associated with the Great Pestilence or Black Death, which peaked in 1346—53 and shrank the world’s population by an estimated seventy-five to two hundred million, coupled with violent deaths on brutal battlefields—was decidedly not beatific, even if the angel were a messenger of God. Death was so efficient in scooping up millions of souls that in the medieval post-plague period, the ministering “angel” became a grinning, ghoulish mirror image of the skeletons of plague victims.

Enter the Grim Reaper whose image was culturally embedded in the fifteenth century and reinforced in the seventeenth century when one out of five died in the Great Plague of London. Because Death was so dedicated to his job, walking among crowds to thin their numbers, he relentlessly lingered on mortal minds. Period artists and illustrators produced his likeness of decayed mortal flesh in paintings, murals, and woodcarvings, establishing a lasting image that is internationally recognized. In medieval times, Death appeared as naked bones on horse or on foot, in armor, and as a skull-in-mirrors leering out as girls admired youthful reflections. Armed with a crossbow or scythe to reap souls and holding an hourglass to mark the passage of time, he nipped life in the bud, sometimes following orders, sometimes luring the living to their end. He was depicted repeatedly in morality plays and works of art leading a chain of mortals from all stations of life—pope and king to peasant and prisoner—in the Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, emphasizing his equal treatment. Whether highbrow or lowbrow, Death danced with everyone.

The modern G.R. is visually unchanged from days of old: still wearing basic black, lingering on the periphery of our vision, but minus some of his dreadful drama. He’s fallen from his position as the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse to a folkloric figure who can be bargained with or duped, as the chess-playing protagonist hopes in Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 movie The Seventh Seal. We breathed easier but kept him shrouded in mystery, as did Emily Dickinson, who keeps him “kindly” and acting with “civility” in her poem “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.” A similar persona, who is himself “haunted by humans,” narrates The Book Thief, breakingcontemporary readers’ hearts as his own breaks.

Ethical and compassionate guides to eternity reveal a more accepting view of Death, possibly due to confidence in modern medicine. When he slipped into pop culture, he became even more innocuous, as in “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” Blue Oyster Cult’s 1976 hit song, or more bumbling, as in his Looney Tunes stalking of Porky Pig. His Bergman character is parodied in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, when the characters play Battleship, electronic football, and Twister instead of chess; and he now appears in child-friendly versions of A Christmas Carol.

We snicker at him on the cartoon Family Guy and laugh at reaper teams in television’s comedy Dead Like Me. Then we’re reminded he’s not a comedian. An Australian AIDS awareness ad shows the Grim Reaper bowling, knocking down men, women, and children who are lined up like bowling pins, then replaced by more human bowling pins. It’s grim, not funny, and neither is dying; but what are we to do?

Maybe jokes about the Grim Reaper are also jokes on us, but they act as a way to balance our fear of obliteration. Taking him off his pedestal doesn’t make him more human, but it does help us face death’s inevitability. So go ahead, grin grimly and laugh; but do it quietly, or you may die laughing.

Lucile wishes everyone a Happy Haunted Halloween from Vicksburg, Mississippi, and wants to thank Bill Fisher from Zachary, Louisiana, for responding to her carpenter bee article and recommending Sevin Dust application for those who can’t be bee happy.